As Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor of Human Resources for the University of Colorado Boulder, I recently had the opportunity to work with Teibel Education to develop an all day workshop for my entire department focusing on managing through change. The Senior Vice Chancellor and Provost brought Howard to campus to work with their leadership teams and they offered him to us in recognition of the significant change taking place within Human Resources including leadership changes and new strategic initiatives that were making for an exciting but unpredictable future in many ways.

While I welcomed the opportunity to work with Teibel, having heard great reviews of their work on campus, I really was not sure what to expect. Prior to the workshop, he surveyed the staff on the strengths and weaknesses of the department and what they hoped to accomplish in our time together. He then followed up with me a few times to prepare for the day and sought input from the leadership team in preparation for the session.

Still I was somewhat apprehensive about how the day would go, knowing that some in our group were concerned that the session might “take them out of their comfort zone” and others saw the session as evidence of yet more change to come. Within the first hour, however, Howard was able to put those fears to rest. In fact he led an engaged audience in a high level discussion about understanding and managing change both organizationally and personally. I watched as the group became visibly more comfortable with accepting change as an inevitable part of the future, with several among the group seeing themselves and the whole of Human Resources as an agent of change. The energy in the room was discernable and several people have approached me since to talk about the experience and to suggest ways to build upon the momentum.

In the short time since, Howard and I have also talked about how to carry forward the momentum and we hope to pursue a partnership between Teibel Education and Human Resources that will allow us to provide change management workshops to the campus. While there is more work to be done, I credit Teibel Education Consulting with helping my organization see itself as a driver of change with a critical role to play in helping the campus embrace change and innovation as we move forward.